At the age of forty-six he applied himself with desperate ardour to the study of the Greek language. Forty-six is no advanced age: how many men are in their prime at that epoch! but it was not so with Alfieri; his very memory failed him, but he persevered with his accustomed energy, battling with difficulties as if they had been opponents, inspired with a sense of opposition. Thus he read the most difficult authors, with the notes of the scholiasts, learning an infinite multitude of verses by heart, and acquiring, in the end, by dint of unwearied industry, a considerable knowledge of the language.

His health was infirm and his quiet disturbed by the progress of the French armies. They came, they said, to liberate Italy, and, under this pretence, destroyed its native governments, introduced their own crude institutions, and then, on pretence of the opposition their tyranny met, despoiling the Italians of their works of art, endeavouring even to supplant their divine language, and treating with contempt and insolence their peculiar manners and customs; so that any welcome given by the Italians to these pretended friends only showed more plainly their insulting pretensions and rapacity. When the French first appeared in Florence, Alfieri and the countess hurried away as if it had been visited by the plague. They established themselves at a villa in the environs, having removed all their property from their house in the city; and here they remained till the French were temporarily driven from Tuscany. On their second invasion, Alfieri had no time to retreat, and he satisfied his feelings of scorn and hatred by never speaking to a Frenchman, or admitting the visits of the leaders of its armies.

His melancholy increased with the irritation caused by political events, by unwearied study, and the physical weakness produced by his systematic abstinence. He was happy in the society of the countess of Albany, and that of his dear friend, the abbate Caluso: but many long hours he spent by himself in gloomy reverie. The bitterness and asperity of his mind was thus increased, and his dislike of society prevented the beneficial action of sympathy and mutual forbearance. He considered himself, to a great degree, a disappointed man in his literary career, and was ignorant of the universal applause bestowed upon his tragedies. He divided his time with the most scrupulous exactitude, and his horses were still dear to him. Many hours were spent in the aisles of Santa Croce, or other churches of Florence, listening to the music, and absorbed in reverie.

During the last years of his life, he was visited each spring by a fit of the gout, and each summer by a desire to employ himself upon original composition, to which he devoted himself with an ardour which brought on, each autumn, a dangerous illness. His six unlucky comedies were the principal objects of these ill-fated labours; and his life was at last their sacrifice. A theorist in all things, he imagined that, as the gout proceeded from inflammation, it could be starved out of his frame; and he commenced a system of abstinence that deprived him of the nutriment necessary to support life. The countess in vain implored him not to adhere to so senseless a plan: it has often happened that, by resisting the prescriptions of physicians, and the aid of medicine, a man has conquered inherent disease, and lived to an old age; but as soon as he begins to administer remedies to himself, and to act from theories, instead of from that long and arduous practice necessary to give the smallest insight into the delicate structure of our physical nature, he must become the victim: thus it was with Alfieri; hard study and abstinence reduced his life to a mere flickering spark; he became a skeleton in appearance; each day he took less nourishment, and the weaker he grew, the more resolutely did he apply himself to study, as the sole solace of his worn-out and burthensome existence. In the month of October, 1803, he was attacked by gout in the stomach. The physicians wished, by means of blisters and sinapisms, to draw it to the extremities; but a childish dislike to the inconvenience which would ensue, and the impossibility of taking his daily walk, if these remedies were applied to his legs, caused him to refuse them. Opium was given instead, and his pain was moderated; but still he sat up; and his mind was rather excited than calmed by the narcotics administered: he remembered as in dreams, but with the utmost vividness, various incidents of his past life, or passages from his own writings and those of others; and these he repeated to the countess, who sat by him watching. No idea of approaching death seems to have entered his mind; and the priest, who came to offer the usual offices of the catholic religion to the dying, was sent away with an invitation to return on the morrow; whether because he believed that by that time he should be beyond such interference, or as a mere excuse for delay, cannot be told. As he grew weaker, he sent for the countess, and when she came he stretched out his hand, saying "Stringetemi la mano, cara amica; mi sento morire." "Press my hand, dear friend; I am dying." These were his last words. He died on the 8th of October, 1803, at the age of fifty-five.

He was buried in Santa Croce, and the countess of Albany erected a tomb to his memory, sculptured by Canova. It is not one of his happiest efforts; but the inscription, which has been called pretending, appears to me simple and affectionate. "Louisa de Stolberg, countess of Albany, to Vittorio Alfieri," is surely no impertinent obtrusion of the name of his dearest friend; and it may be remarked, that, while the countess has been censured for recording her name so prominently. Alfieri, in the epitaph he himself composed for her, makes it her chief praise that she was "quam unice dilexit,"—the only love of the poet.

This account of the life of a man who was endowed with the chief attribute of genius,—that of spontaneously forming and manifesting itself, despite every obstacle or adverse circumstance,—may be concluded by the quotation of the sonnet in which he describes his own person; a faithful translation of which, which we also append, appeared, some years ago, in "The Liberal." It may be quoted with the more propriety at the end of his life, since it was written when time had robbed him of the graces of youth; giving instead those characteristic marks stamped by the action of his disposition and pursuits.

MONTI

1754-1828.

Monti is, without question, the greatest Italian poet that has appeared since the golden days of its poetry: he alone emulates his predecessors in the higher flights of the imagination. It has been pronounced of Dryden, that if each of the princes of poetry surpassed him in their peculiar vein, yet his fire and originality give him a near place beside them. Thus Monti has not the sublimity of Dante, nor the tenderness of Petrarch; neither the inventive flow of Ariosto, nor Tasso's epic conception and voluptuous grace: but he has a fervour, a power of imagery, an overflowing and redundance of ideal thought, that mark the genuine poet.

He came to revive the languid and unnatural style that flourished under the reign of the Arcadians. Some few real poets had sprung up in Italy in the interval between Ariosto and Monti: they are recorded in this volume. Chiabrera and Filicaja are the chief. These men found in the inspiration of their own minds the power that led them to adopt a style of their own, and to bestow originality—which, in one shape or another, is the vivifying soul of composition,—on their productions. Metastasio carried clearness and grace of expression to a great perfection, but he wanted strength and daring: Alfieri had not a trace of that sunshiny and rainbow-like (so to speak) colour-giving power of fancy, without which there is no real poetry. For the rest, the poets of those days were Arcadians; the very word seems to express volumes of inane affectation, and turgid, yet soulless, language. It is thus that a clever Italian critic of the present day speaks of them:—"To the hyperboles and conceits of the seicentisti, succeeded the follies and pastorals of the Arcadians. The subject treated by these poets were restrained in narrow limits; they were all futile, trite, vulgar, or silly,—adulatory, or false. A new-married pair, a nun,—the new-born babe of some sovereign or noble,—the election of a cardinal, or a bishop, or even of an abbé—a funeral or a feigned love; such were the favourite themes of the Arcadians. Was a marriage in question,—Hymen was adjured to bring its chains to link two hearts; and a new Hercules or Achilles was prognosticated as the future result of the union. If a girl shut herself up in the cloister, the poets expatiated on her happiness; they described the heavenly bridegroom as descending and stretching out his hand to her, while the mischievous Cupid angrily threw away his golden quiver; a censurable mixture of sacred and profane imagery was thus introduced, and their ideas were steeped in two fountains, in contradiction one to the other, the Bible and mythology. The most shameless flattery blotted their pages, as they praised one another, and depicted themselves on the heights of Parnassus,—beside the waters of Hypocrene,—in the company of Apollo and the Muses; and the wonders of Orpheus and Amphion were renewed, to express the charms of each other's verses. No Arcadian dared imagine himself enamoured of a human being: she was no mortal woman, but a goddess,—a Venus sprung on the instant from the foam of the sea: lips, and eyes, and hair, had all their appropriate, still-repeated epithets: did their lady sigh, or did one word escape the paling of her ivory teeth,—tempests fled, the winds were stilled, and Jove was again tempted to transform himself into a bull for her sake."[52]

Men can do strange things when they associate in companies, and keep each other in countenance by a wide-spread folly, that bars out the wholesome fear of ridicule. Thus, the Arcadians had colonies all over Italy. They gave feigned names to each other; they lauded, and celebrated, and crowned each other. Good sense and good taste were sacrificed in the emulation each felt to transcend his rivals in a sonorous and turgid system of words, in which neither passion nor thought appeared.[53] A new genius was wanted to trample on this overgrowth of vanity or folly, and to gift the tamed and chained language of Dante and Bojardo with wings and liberty. Such was the poet, the incidents of whose life we now proceed to detail.

Vincenzo Monti was born in Romagna, on the 19th of February, 1754. His father's simple, and even humble, but pretty and agreeable, house was situated among the vineyards and agricultural country which lies between Fusignano and the Alfonsine, in the Ravennese territory. The air is healthy and serene, the country fertile and diversified, and the style of life of his parents such as at once cultivated simplicity of taste and kindness of heart. Nothing can be more primitive and patriarchal than the mode of life of the smaller landholders in Italy; and to this class Monti's father belonged. The farm-house—or villa, as it is called, if a little better than a cottage—is situated amidst the ground they cultivate. The name of podere is given to these small farms, enclosed by hedges, within whose limits grapes, corn, vegetables, and fruits are all cultivated in a sort of picturesque confusion. The vines, trained on trellises, form covered walks; and the sound of the water-wheel is continually heard, and of the water trickling through the conduits that lead it to the various parts of the grounds. The Italian farmer works very hard, and the cottager still harder. He divides the produce of the land with his landlord, entertains few servants, and his habits are at once laborious and frugal. The parents of Monti were an excellent specimen of the virtues of this unpretending race. They are still remembered in the country by numbers of the poor whom they assisted and comforted. Their children were brought up to consider it a valuable privilege to bestow help upon those in want of the necessaries of life, and Vincenzo in particular inherited from them a warm heart and a tenderness of feeling that caused him to be idolised in his domestic circle.

Monti passed his early boyhood in this rural retirement. To the end of his life he remembered with fondness the days of his childhood, which were spent gaily amidst a large family of three brothers, older than himself, and five sisters. The reward for good behaviour among them was a permission to distribute charity among the indigent,—a sacred, soul-saving duty with catholics. The well-known benevolence of his parents drew numbers to their house, where portions of food were distributed to them. His mother never felt so happy as when thus engaged; and it is related of her that, when, a few years after, the family removed to Majano, where their charitable habits were at first unknown, she complained in a sort of alarm that they were no longer visited by the poor. The same biographer relates a story of Vincenzo. On one occasion he was permitted to distribute the portions of food to mendicants, who entered at one door and went out at the other: some among them fancied that they could deceive the child, and returned twice; and he, with ingenuous shame, turned away, and gave to them twice without looking, that he might not be obliged to accuse them of their trick. "An anecdote," continues his biographer, "perhaps scarcely worth relating, only that it describes the character, or rather, it may be said, the whole life of Monti, who, even in old age, frequently suffered himself voluntarily to be imposed upon." Were a philosophical analysis of Monti's disposition to be attempted, it might be discovered how this sensitiveness to the shame of others, this sparing of their feelings in preference to the assertion of truth and honesty, makes a part of the same weakness that led him always to regard as a secondary consideration moral truths and political integrity, when put in competition with the happiness and welfare of his domestic circle. We call this sort of sensibility weakness, because, though usually united to great private rectitude of character, it is incompatible with the heroism of the patriot and the martyr.

For several years Monti had no instructors except his kind parents; but, soon after their removal to Majano, he was sent to the seminary of Faenza, which enjoyed a good reputation for the solidity of its instruction; there he learnt early and well the Latin language. His first attempts in Latin verse were, however, so singularly infelicitous, that his master thought it necessary to put him into a lower class than that in which he had first been placed. The boy, roused to indignation, made no complaints, but secretly learned by heart the whole of the Æneid; and persevered so earnestly in conquering the difficulties, that his Latin verses soon became distinguished for a style and harmony that announced his poetic talent. His second trial was so different from the first, that his masters began to regard him as a sort of prodigy; and he himself entered with delight and ardour on the study of the Roman poets. The full force of his impetuous and fertile imagination was early awakened by them, and he began to exercise the art peculiar to his country of extemporising verses; but his master had the judgment to withdraw him from an exercise so pernicious to the strength and critical delicacy of poetry, and induced him to write with care and meditation. He was yet a boy when, under this tutelage, he composed a volume of elegies, several of which have been printed.

It is the usual custom among the smaller landholders of Romagna to destine their youngest sons to the agricultural labours of their farms; and this was fixed as the career of Monti. He yielded to his father's commands, but with reluctance. His mind was opened to the necessity of cultivation, and mere manual labour and low-thoughted cares were infinitely distasteful to him. His heart was with the Latin poets, from whom he could not separate himself; and his dislike to every occupation that was not intellectual grew to be insurmountable. His father thought it necessary to reprove him; and a scene ensued similar to one recorded as having taken place, several centuries before, between Petrarch and his father. Vincenzo, moved by his parent's reproof to a belief that his literary predilections were reprehensible, made a resolution to renounce them. He led his father into his chamber, and there, before him, threw his favourite authors into a large fire. The good man, touched by this act of docility, gave him twelve sequins; and the youth, unable to resist the temptation thus held out, hastened to the neighbouring fair of Luga, and spent the whole sum in buying over again the authors whose works he had left at home, still warm in the ashes of the fire into which he had thrown them. His father, seeing the inutility of combating with his inclinations, sent him to the university of Ferrara, wishing him to enter on the legal or medical profession. But, after a few vain attempts to apply himself to these studies, Monti gave up every other pursuit, and dedicated himself wholly to the cultivation of literature and poetry. He still continued to write in Latin, and always retained a predilection for this language, and later in life translated some of his own works into it. His first Italian poem was "The Prophecy of Jacob." It was, of course, inexact in versification, and unequal; but when Jacob prophesies the future glory of the Lion of Judah, the style rises into vigour, and even sublimity. At this time the "Visions" of Varino and the sonnets of Minzoni, two Ferrarese poets, fell into his hands. They rose above the inanities of the Arcadians, and indicated to him the path he should pursue. Through reading them he was brought to the perusal of Dante, and his soul opened at once to the conception of all that Italian poetry contains of grand and beautiful. Henceforth Alighieri was his model and master, and he regarded at once with admiration and a sort of worship the elevated and godlike powers of this most inspired of poets. He wrote the "Vision of Ezekiel" in a sort of imitation of his favourite, in which he displayed that grandeur of imagery and command of language which distinguish his compositions.

Cardinal Borghese was at that time legate at Ferrara. Admiring the youth's genius, he took him under his protection. On his return from his legation, he obtained the elder Monti's consent to his son's accompanying him to Rome. He was now eighteen. The first intimacy that he formed in the capital was with Ennio Quirino Visconti, a man of vast erudition; and under his direction Monti extended his classical knowledge. It happened, while he was at Rome, that the Erme of Pericles and Aspasia were discovered,—one in excavations made in the villa of Cassius at Tivoli, the other at Cività Vecchia. Visconti wrote a treatise on these marbles, and invited his friend to celebrate them in a poem; and he wrote the "Prosopopea di Pericle," which is preserved in the Vatican museum, written with great simplicity of style, and his usual easy flow, yet fervour, of language. This was the first time that he appeared in the character of a poet at Rome; and it was followed by several other attempts. He thus attracted attention; but, having no fixed situation, after remaining some years in the capital, he was on the point of complying with his father's frequent requests that he would return home, when a circumstance happened to change his plans. The Arcadians of the Bosco Parrasio celebrated the Quinquenalli of Pius VI. (1780, ætat. 26.); when Monti recited some of his compositions, which attracted so much applause that the duke of Braschi, the pope's nephew, sent for him the next day, and offered him the place of his secretary, which was at once accepted. Monti remained at Rome in the house of the prince, who treated him with all the kindness of friendship, and he enjoyed full leisure to pursue his literary studies.

Yet it is, perhaps, matter of regret that Monti should have been thus employed. It is very difficult to make rules for the education of genius, when, on the one hand, care and want may fetter, and even crush, its loftiest aspirations; or too much case and leisure wean it from habits of industry, and foster the dissipation of thought and feeling which too frequently accompanies the poetic temperament. Monti's muse had surely not been silent if he had remained in his father's farm, surrounded by the luxuriant beauty of nature, and supported by conscious worth and independence. But no people need so much sympathy as poets. The interchange of thought and feeling, the fresh spirit of inquiry and invention, that springs from the collision or harmony of different minds, are with them a necessity and a passion. And though solitude is named the mother of all that is truly sublime, yet this solitude ought not to be that of desolation, but retirement to meditate on the stores heaped up in our intercourse with our fellow-creatures. Monti, among the uncultivated peasantry of Romagna, might have found his glowing enthusiasm grow cool from the absence of appreciation, and the want of sympathy and equal intercourse.

Yet servitude at the court of Rome was no good moral school. To the years he spent in the service of the pope's nephew, the habits of dependence, and his daily intercourse with courtiers, may be attributed that want of political integrity, and ready worship of ruling powers, which was the great blot of Monti's character. The genuine glow of real talent, the ambition natural to conscious genius, and the instinct of one, in whom invention and the power of expression were indigenous, to pour forth his ideas and sentiments, qualities which indefeasibly belonged to him, would, in almost any situation, have made Monti a writer. He might have been less refined in the farms of Romagna, but more useful as a moral and dignified asserter of truth and independence. Yet we must reflect that the germ of each man's character is born with him, to be checked or fostered by education, but still there to colour the tide of thought and influence the motives of conduct. And as independence and strength of principle never displayed themselves as a part of Monti's character, temptation might have found him as willing a slave in the poverty of his farm as in the luxurious servitude of papal Rome.

At Rome, at least, he continued to cultivate his poetic tastes. He produced several poems which kept alive his fame. On occasion of the marriage of his patron, the duke of Braschi, he wrote an ode entitled "Beauty of the Universe;" and he celebrated the journey of Pius VI. to the imperial court in a poem entitled the "Apostolic Pilgrim." But he aspired to signalise himself by some greater work, and long meditated writing a tragedy. As early as 1779 he writes to a friend,—"I am weary of writing verses on frivolous subjects. A tragic drama is the notion that most delights me. But how can I satisfy the craving I have to write a tragedy, since I am not able to tranquillise my mind, and am occupied by affairs which have no connection with poetry? An hundred times I have begun, and as often broken off." And in another letter he expresses a feeling which has often entered the mind of any one deeply interested in carrying on some literary labour:—"I have a ravenous desire," he says, "to write tragedies, which preys upon me. This is my madness; and I am in despair, because I fear to die before I finish one."

His ambition was further excited by the emulation inspired by Alfieri. This great tragedian was now residing at Rome; and Monti was present when he read his "Virginia" in a society composed of the most celebrated literati of the day. Monti listened with transport, and, burning with a desire to rival this production, he instantly began his tragedy of "Aristodemo," founded on a story he had read a few days before in Pausanias. He was the more eager to accomplish his purpose, as lie perceived the faults of Alfieri's style, and hoped to avoid them. The fecundity of his imagination rendered it easy for him to rise above the baldness and unideal versification of his rival; so that it has been pronounced, that a perfect tragedy would be produced, were "the grandeur and penetration of Alfieri adorned by the style of Monti." "Aristodemo" was acted with the greatest success at Rome in 1787. Monti writes to a friend,—"My tragedy was represented yesterday evening at the theatre of Valle. I was not present; but when it was over, my house was inundated by my acquaintances, who seemed mad with delight. I ought not to mention this, but I write to a friend, and I assure you that every one agrees that so great a success and so much enthusiasm was never known at Rome before."

And here it is impossible not to remark the different feelings of Alfieri and Monti. Alfieri entered upon his literary career when the more brilliant portion of the fire of youth was passing away. He had sufficient enthusiasm to animate him to mental labour, and to warm his imagination to the conception of fictitious situations, but not enough to foster the delusion of success. While he pretended stoicism and disdain, he was very sensitive to criticism; but when applause was afforded, he scanned the merits of his judges, was annoyed by the faults of the actors, and never reaped the just reward of his toils—the sense of triumph. While the more youthful Monti, early catching the spark of enthusiasm from his audience and his friends, enjoyed, to its full extent, the celebrity which a successful tragedy, more than any other species of literary composition, is able to confer.

The genius of Monti, however, was not that of a tragedian: lyrical and imaginative rhapsodies, rather than the concatenation of a plot and the impersonation of human passion, were the native bent of his mind. The story of "Aristodemo" is eminently simple in its construction; the interest is entirely confined to the principal character, and there is almost no action to support the piece. Aristodemo had, to acquire the popular favour, and his election to the throne of Mycene, resolved to sacrifice his daughter, when some angry god required that the blood of a virgin should be shed on his altar. To save the girl, her lover declares that she has yielded to him, and is about to be a mother. In his fury the father destroys her, and afterwards discovers that she is innocent. To add to his misfortunes he loses his only other child, a little girl of three years old, in a skirmish with the Spartans. Henceforth he is pursued by remorse; the spectacle of his murdered daughter for ever haunts him, and horror and despair darken his soul. The tragedy opens, fifteen years after these events, at the conclusion of a war with Sparta, with the discussion for a treaty of peace, when the prisoners on both sides are to be given up. Among those taken by Aristodemo is a girl, to whom he has attached himself with paternal fondness, and who devotes herself to mitigating his sufferings. She, of course, is discovered to be his long lost daughter; but this is not made known to him till the last scene, when the agonies of remorse, joined to sorrow at losing his last consolation, have driven him to destroy himself. The pure but warm attachment between him and his unknown child is delicately and sweetly described, while his passionate and remorseful ravings, though they rise to sublimity, shock us by going beyond ideal terrors into images palpably disagreeable. From this sketch it may be seen how deficient in action the piece is. Aristodemo comes before us to lament and to rave. Still, despite his woe, he is a hero and a king; and, when the interests of his country require it, he can dismiss his private griefs, and assert the majesty of the crown. His character is conceived in the truth and sublimity of tragic nature; and the interest that hovers over him, the dim but harrowing horrors of his spectral visions, the mingled remorse, terror, and love that tear his heart, and the poetry in which these overpowering passions are expressed, take absolutely from the languor which the want of action might otherwise impart.

The success of "Aristodemo" induced Monti to write another drama. "Galeotto Manfredi" is, however, a failure. It is founded on the passion of jealousy. In his preface the poet mentions that it is wanting in tragic dignity: such is not of necessity the fault of his subject, but it decidedly is of his method of treating it, and there is no poetry to redeem it from the charge of mediocrity.

He married, about this period, the daughter of the celebrated cavaliere Giovanni Pickler, who had died a short time before. It is a singular fact, that he made choice of his wife without having seen her, and not on account of her extraordinary beauty, of which he was ignorant, but from respect for the reputation of her father, and a wish to console his afflicted family; while she accepted him on account of her admiration for the author of "Aristodemo." And now we enter on a new epoch of Monti's life, when he composed his most celebrated poem, and at the same time gave to his productions that political groundwork which, from his vacillation of principle, has not redounded to his honour.

The French revolution was at its height; and the time-worn and absolute governments of every country of Europe were shaken, as by an earthquake, by the mere echo of the Parisian tocsin. The French, drunk with enthusiasm, were eager to call the whole world into a fraternity of liberty and equality; and many were the warm young hearts, long bowed down by the yoke of the continental systems of slavery, that beat responsive to the call. One of the persons sent by the French to spread their revolutionary tenets beyond the Alps was Hugh Basseville. He was the son of a dyer at Abbeville; the talents he early displayed induced his father to wish him to pursue a more dignified career, and he educated him for the church, as the only profession then open to the lowly born. But Basseville studied theology only to find doubts as to his creed; he soon abandoned the clerical profession, and, going to Paris, gave himself up entirely to literature. He here fell in with two Americans, who engaged him as their companion, or tutor, in a journey they made through Germany. At Berlin, Basseville became acquainted with Mirabeau. Leaving his Americans he visited Holland, and wrote a work on the Elements of Mythology, and a volume of amatory poems. When the revolution began, he attached himself to the royal, or rather constitutional, party, and instituted a journal which took that side. He wrote also a "History of the French Revolution," dedicated to La Fayette, with whom he was intimately acquainted; and the views he developes are moderate and rational. He was naturally eloquent, and his manners were agreeable, while he joined to these fascinating qualities the more solid ones of industry, intelligence, and boldness, so that he acquired the confidence and friendship of several of the Girondist leaders. General Demourier named him secretary to the embassy at Naples; and while there he visited Rome, for the purpose of secretly propagating revolutionary doctrines. This imprudence cost him his life. On the night of the 13th of January, 1793, he was assailed by the populace, and received a stab, of which he died thirty-four hours after. In his last moments, it is said that he was induced to regard his conduct, in endeavouring to raise sedition against the pope, as criminal, and to have exclaimed several times that he died the victim of folly.

Monti, who lived in the service of the pope's nephew, and was thus attached to the papal court, and without that ardour for liberty which is so natural to many hearts, and which appears at once senseless and even wicked to those who do not feel independence of thought to be the greatest of human blessings, of course looked on the French revolution as a series of crimes, and saw no redeeming good in the madness that urged a whole nation to so terrific a mixture of heroism and guilt. He was acquainted with Basseville, and, hearing the recantations of his dying moments, celebrated at once the repentance of his friend, and the awful tragedy acted almost at the same moment (Louis XVI. was beheaded on the 19th of January, 1793), in a poem entitled the "Basvilliana." In this he feigns that the great enemy of mankind contended with the angel of God for the soul of the murdered man. His death-bed remorse caused the good spirit to remain triumphant; but as the crime-tainted soul could not, according to the tenets of Catholicism, be received at once into Paradise, the disembodied spirit of Basseville was condemned to visit once more the banks of the Seine, and to view the horrors there perpetrated, as the consequence of his guilty and impracticable theories. The imagination of Monti developed itself in the happiest manner in treating this theme; and the mingled emotions of horror and grief that pervade the poem take a shape at once sublime and pathetic. The soul of Basseville hovers over Paris at the moment that Louis XVI. loses his head by the guillotine. The imagery with which he adorns the scene is original and majestic. Four mighty shadows rush on the scaffold, and hover over the dying monarch; shadows of former regicides, who glory in the companionship of crime. Ravaillac, Ankerstrom, Damiens, and one (the executioner of our Charles I.) who veils his face with his hand, proudly assist in giving the fatal blow. Louis dies, and before his beatified ghost Basseville prostrates himself; but his penance is not got over, and he is forced to view other scenes of greater bloodshed and more frightful violence; but as the poem enters upon these, it breaks off abruptly, and is left unfinished.

The style of this poem does not resemble modern Italian poetry, but is modelled on that of Dante; so faithfully modelled, that many expressions, ideas, and even whole lines are, as it were, transfused, into Monti's verses. It is a singular fact that no poet was ever a greater plagiarist than the author of the "Basvilliana;" but the verses of others, which he thus employs, are framed, as it were, so magnificently by original ones, and are placed with such propriety, and acknowledged with such frankness, that, as an English author observes, "so far from accusing him of plagiarism, we are agreeably surprised by the new aspect which he gives to beauties already familiar to every reader." And thus transfusion expresses his imitations better than the word borrowing: for though the form of expression is the same, a new soul and a new sense—not better, certainly, but different from their former one—are breathed into them. In some sort Dante and Monti resembled each other in the cast of their ideas. They were both painters of the mind's images. Dante was the more faithful, delicate, and heartfelt; but there is a shadowy grandeur joined to a perfection of taste and fire of sentiment in Monti, which renders his poetry highly fascinating and beautiful.

The "Basvilliana" at once raised Monti's reputation higher than that of any poet who had for centuries appeared in Italy; and he might have been considered the laureate of royalty, but that his character was not adorned by that sincere and exalted enthusiasm, without which no man can, with any success, advocate any cause which embraces the interests of human nature.

The tide of French republicanism, checked a little in its first advances, now swelled by Bonaparte's victories, overflowed the Alps and deluged Italy. The Austrians, defeated at Montenotte, Lodi, and Arcoli, were driven from Lombardy: and the Italians hoped to exchange servitude to a foreign power for national independence; forgetting that liberty, when given, may also be withdrawn, and that it is only by force that any real freedom can be acquired. While resistance was made to the French arms, the requisitions of the victor, and the seizure of the finest works of art, might have opened their eyes to the real views of their soi-disant deliverers. Napoleon himself had but one idea with regard to liberty, which was a free scope to the exercise of his own will. When that was given him, he could be generous, magnificent, and useful; but when his measures were obstructed, no tyrant ever exceeded him in the combinations of a despotism which at once crushed a nation, and bore down with an iron hand every individual that composed it. Bonaparte's ambition, however, could only be gratified in France, and the conquest of Italy was but the stepping-stone to the French empire. Still, when all the north of the peninsula was subjected to him, when the pope had submitted to his terms, and the haughty queen of Naples had been induced to enter into a treaty with her sister's destroyers, he could no longer with any grace refuse the shows of freedom so often promised. On the 3d of January, 1797, the Cisalpine republic was erected.

Monti had been before invited to accept a professor's chair in the university of Pavia, which he had refused. In the month of February 1797, general Marmont was sent to Rome on occasion of the treaty of Tolentino, to carry letters from Bonaparte to the pope. Monti became acquainted with him; being then in a bad state of health, and advised to change the air of Rome for that of Tuscany, he accepted Marmont's invitation, who offered him a seat in his carriage, and proceeded to Florence. It may be imagined, that familiar intercourse with one of Napoleon's generals was the foundation of Monti's admiration for the French hero, and the cause of his opening his eyes to the good to be derived from adhering to the new order of things in his native country. At first he entertained the delusive hope that the blessing of liberty had really been conferred on Italy by the French arms, and that his countrymen would rise from chains and slavery to the enjoyment of national independence under national institutions; and yet the extravagant praise of Napoleon, which he indulges in, in all his poems written at this time, does not bear the marks of a sincere patriotism. Besides this, he had to struggle with many personal mortifications. The "Basvilliana" was not forgotten. French exactions and French assumptions had already alienated the minds of the noble born among the Italians. They feared the conqueror, but disdained the masquerade of liberty in which they were invited to play a part: thus the better classes shrunk from forming a part of the new governments, and the offices devolved upon men who had little to lose either in possessions or character. They regarded Monti with envy and aversion, and, instead of receiving him as a convert with open arms, his superior claims as a man of talent caused them to persecute him as an interloper and almost as a spy. The heads of the government, indeed, at first favoured him: he was invited to Milan, and elected central secretary of foreign affairs; but he was soon disturbed by persecutions. "My arrival," he writes several years afterwards, "was hailed by the usual abuse of the republican journals, who censured the directory for employing an enemy of the republic. I loved liberty; but the object of my love was the freedom described in the writings of Cicero and Plutarch: that which was adored on the altars of Milan appeared to me a prostitute, and I refused to worship her. Hence my excommunication,—hence the public burning of the 'Basvilliana.' On this I was obliged to prostrate myself before the idol. I sang her virtues, and became a revolutionary poet: I grew insane with the rest, and my conversion procured me patronage and grace."

It was not without a struggle that he stooped to these abject submissions, and several events first intervened. The hatred of the democrats, then the rulers of the Cisalpine republic, caused them to pass a law which decreed that no one should be permitted to hold any public employment who, since the year 1 of the French republic, had published any books tending to throw odium on democracy. Monti's poem was the principal object of this law; and one of his adversaries exclaimed, "Let us get rid, not of the author of some foolish sonnet in praise of kings, but of those who, with powerful enthusiasm and Dantesque imagination, have inspired a hatred for democracy." This law being passed, Monti lost his situation. He had published other poems since the "Basvilliana;" but even these were not considered sufficiently democratic.

The "Musogonia," or Birth of the Muses, is almost entirely mythological; but, in the concluding verses, he apostrophises Bonaparte. He implores him to be at once the Alexander and Numa of Italy: he beseeches him to bestow laws upon her, and to unite her scattered members; and, with a noble voice, he calls upon the Italians to cultivate concord and unanimity. "Brothers!" he exclaims, "bear the voice of your brother! What do you hope from divided opinions and counsels? Ah, let there be in our country, in its danger, one mind, one courage, one soul, one life!" The republicans perceived a hankering for royalty and tyranny in his dislike of their measures.

The "Prometeo" is a finer poem, or rather fragment, for but few of the cantos are written. The subject of it is the history of Prometheus; but we have only a small portion of it in the poem as it stands. It opens with the foolish act of Epimetus. Jupiter had sent to him a casket containing the various intellectual attributes and moral qualities, to be distributed among the new creation on earth. Epimetus begins by bestowing various qualities on animals, and is so prodigal of his gifts, that when he comes to man he finds the casket empty. On this, he has recourse to his wiser brother Prometheus, who reprimands him for his folly. This opening is the weaker part of the poem. Lyrical outbursts were more accordant to Monti's genius. The appearance of Constancy before Prometheus is sublime, and the hero's prophecy of the future state of man is full of fire and grandeur. It ends, however, by a prophecy of Napoleon, on whom is heaped every epithet that admiration or adulation could suggest. Jupiter gives him his lightning, which loses none of its terrors in the young hero's hands. He shakes the bolts over Germany, and the Rhetian Alps resound with the hoofs of the Gallic cavalry. One after the other, Prometheus celebrates the glorious victories achieved in Italy, and hails with enthusiasm French Liberty, as the mother of heroes who shiver the chains that bound Ausonia, and wipe the tears from universal Europe—obstructed in its beneficent career only by the English robber. Bonaparte must have exulted in the bitter and venomous abuse that Monti never fails to heap upon England. He tells us, in the preface to this poem, that its scope is to bring into favour the neglected literature of Greece and Rome, and to merit well from a free country by speaking in the accents of freedom. There is something in the applause heaped on the conqueror that jars with our notions of real independence and patriotism.

Monti, at this time, entertained the idea of returning to republicanised Rome. But his friends dissuaded him; and his reputation, and probably his adulation of the victor, caused him soon after to be named commissary of the province of the Rubicon. But a poet makes a bad politician; and Monti's integrity stood in the way of his success, and he was obliged to give up his office. He made many enemies, and, naturally timid and fearful for the welfare of his family, he was terrified into making a complete amende to the democrats of his country by writing odes, whose violent sentiments went beyond those of the most furious demagogues: and it is to these poems that he alludes when he speaks of the worship he was forced to pay to the mockery of liberty; and ever after he regretted his pusillanimity, and despised himself for his concessions.

At the time they gained this point, his enemies were pacified; and the survivorship of the professor's chair of belles lettres in Brera, then occupied by Parini, was bestowed on him. But scarcely had he overcome the enmity of the friends of liberty and equality, than their star was eclipsed, and their reign came to an end. 1799.
Ætat.
45. During the absence of Bonaparte in Egypt, Suvaroff and the Austrians crossed the Alps, and the French were driven from Italy. Her republics vanished like a forgotten dream; and their partisans, Monti among them, were forced to follow the retreating army of France, and to take refuge beyond the Alps.

Monti fell into a state of deplorable destitution. He had left his wife and young daughter in Italy, and he roamed alone and friendless among the mountains of Savoy. His sufferings during the brief period of his exile were frightful. He wandered about, subsisting on the fruit he picked up under the trees. Often seated on the rugged banks of a torrent, he satisfied his hunger with roots and nuts, and wept as he thought of Italy and his ruined fortunes. The benevolence of his heart manifested itself in the midst of this adversity. It is related of him, that, as he was wandering one evening in a narrow lane, near Chamberi, a stranger accosted him and asked charity, relating that he had a sick mother and five children. Monti's heart was moved: two sequins was all that he possessed in the world; he gave one of them to the suppliant. His health failed through the hardships that he endured; the labour of collecting his food became intolerable, and he forced himself to gather at one time sufficient for two days, so as to secure himself one of uninterrupted rest. His wife, who had remained to put their affairs in some order, now joined him. She found him stretched on a wretched bed, weak from inanition, but disdaining to apply to any one for relief in his need. She brought money with her, and proper food soon restored his strength; nor did he again fall into such an extremity of disaster, though it was long before the fickle goddess smiled upon him.

The minister, Mareschalchi, invited him to Paris; and the new victories of Bonaparte in Italy, on his return from Egypt in the following year, revived his hopes of better times. Mareschalchi obtained that he should be employed to write a hymn and an ode in celebration of the victory of Marengo, which had driven the allies from Italy and restored it to the French. He was to have been paid 1500 francs for these two poems, with the further reward of the professorship of Italian literature in the French university. But fortune was not weary of persecuting him; and this remuneration was withheld, on its being represented to government that he was, at heart, inimical to the French. Mareschalchi continued to befriend him, and obtained 500 francs, or about 20l. "No small relief to me," he writes, "in my necessitous circumstances." He was very eager to return to Italy, and he writes to his brother,—"Of the many thousand refugees who were here, almost all have returned to their country, because all have instantly received the necessary succour from home. I alone find myself abandoned by my relations, in a strange country, without friends, and without resources; unless, indeed, I can make up my mind to renounce my country for the sake of earning my bread in some office. But an irresistible sentiment is linked to the name of my native land. I possess in Italy the objects dearest to my heart—my child, my mother, brothers, friends, studies, habits; all, in short, that renders life dear. I pant, therefore, to return; and I implore you to send me assistance in the shape of a remittance for my journey, and to discharge my debts here. Every delay injures my interests, particularly at this moment. Direct to 'Citizen Vincenzo Monti, Post-office, Paris.' I shall count the days and moments—make my account short, if my happiness is dear to you."

Soon after his wishes were fulfilled, and he celebrates his return to his beloved Italy by a beautiful hymn, which begins—